my habit of thinking

Tag Archives: tile project

I spent all day working on my tile project in my dad’s bathroom. It looks great! I am so please with how well the flaws I found while working on it are disguised or barely noticeable. Now I am at a loss for what to do with myself. I might try reading again… something short though. I think my recent issue with reading is that I get tired of reading through so much stuff just to get to one small interesting bit of information (Can you relate right now? :). I need a way to pass time joyfully.

I was listening to my internal dialogue while I was putting in some tile and I realized that I’m not as nice to myself as I think I should be. I’ve always been pushy with myself to get stuff done like studying or whatever else I need to do to accomplish something I set out to accomplish, which is healthy in itself, but my method of ridiculing myself in the process needs to be changed to a positive-reinforcement method. I learned from my mom that if there is something about myself that I do not like or just aren’t happy with, then change it. So I found ways to change habits over time, one of those is bitching at myself. While doing a project, my old habits resonate in my mind. A very simple example is that it crossed my mind that I may not vacuum up the excess mess I made before I finish up for the day. I used to never finish projects though I have managed to finish my projects now, clean up is something that I have always gotten lazy about. I don’t always think the benefit of having a clean space is necessary, though often when I have cleaned up I find small problems that could have created a bigger problem if I had left it for later. Regardless it seems ridiculous for such an issue to be a problem to me.

The big issue is not my laziness, it is really that I can manage that aspect of myself in a healthier way. All I have to do to avoid mistakes from starring me in the face in the future…is to fix the problem in the present, which can be done through more self assuring methods. Now that leads me into mistakes, or at least those things I perceive to be mistakes because I am sure there are more but I don’t mind those mistakes because they were either minimal or inconsequential.

So in changing my habits, I bitch at myself to avoid mistakes. This coping mechanism has in the past worked (looking back: for a long time), but I can tell that it is causing me more distress than it is worth because I have suddenly been made aware of it. A key aspect of it is that once I make myself feel like shit, no one else can really tell me otherwise unless I am certain that their standards are higher or at least on par with my own. I respond well to criticism since it is an obvious tool to get myself to change my mind or actions so I don’t really resent internal criticism, I just deal with it because I believe I need it (keyword: believe). Seeing as I constantly criticize myself, it is no wonder that I can often be overly sensitive and not be able to handle even the slightest notion of external criticism. With all this effort I put into myself, external criticism pisses me off unless I can see how it is constructively legitimate, which it often is not, or at least, not worth telling me about.

Anyways, it is going to take a few tries but I need to be nicer to myself and I think everyone else will benefit.